Unless otherwise stated, these are all my own work. They were mostly recorded on a fairly basic portable cassette recorder, although I now use a Zoom H2. Sound quality is not perfect and they may not always be complete, but I hope they are better than nothing. I still have over 40 tapes going back to 1997 to process, so please call back. Please report any dead links by leaving a comment. If you get a 404 error on these links, please substitute https for http

I cannot trace the songs comprising tracks tracks 11 and 13 on any of Tarika's recordings. I have titled them according to what I think is being said, but no doubt I am wrong. The remaining songs are from the albums Bibiango and Son Egal. The songs here are about a semitone flat in comparison with album versions. It is possible that I copied them from the tape at the wrong speed. But I played this tape back at the same speed as the Zap Mama session (on the other side of the same tape) and other recordings made at the same time on the same recorder and they all seem OK when they are compared to CDs of the same songs.

This is the first concert I ever bootlegged. Fearful of discovery, I kept the microphone concealed under my shirt, which will explain some of the scraping noises you hear. The recorder did not have auto-reverse and I did not think I would be able to change tapes unnoticed, so I did not carry a spare tape. I hit the pause button in a couple of places during the second set to be sure of having enough tape left for the encores. But in the event, I was overly cautious. As things turned out, some songs were needlessly omitted from the recording and I was left with plenty of blank tape to spare.http://rapidshare.com/files/185343521/Le_Mystere_de_Voix_Bulgares_1994-11-16__320.part1.rar

Thursday, January 1, 2009

If you found this blog while searching for Leonard Barras, he will need no introduction from me. If you do not know of him, his obituary in The Guardian will tell you something about the man and his work. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/03/culture.obituaries
They describe him as "Beachcomber meets Flann O'Brien" and others have compared him to Ivor Cutler and Spike Milligan. I'd say there are also similarities to Peter Tinniswood and N.F. Simpson.

During the 1980s and 1990s, BBC Radio 4 made several broadcasts of Barras reading his own stories. I taped a number of them and here they are. There is the odd bit of intereference but overall I think the quality is fair. At any rate, as far as I know, none of Barras's readings are commercially available at present, so I think they are better than nothing. If anybody out there can add to the collection, please leave a comment or e-mail me direct at the address given in my profile.

Certain Vicissitudes

Very Likely (three episodes) -
Love in a Windy Place
Nothing Like Flute Practice
Third Time and Still Unlucky

Further up the Tyne in a Flummox (four episodes)
Last Night, Ah Yesternight & Not the Food of Love
A Number of Mean Things & The Case of Many Legs
Ambition's Debt & A Sanctified Artefact
A Hanging Matter & Her Voice Was Ever Soft

Even Further up the Tyne in a Flummox (four episodes)
Much Persuasion & Rhubarb, A Conservative View
Find Truth for Yourself & The Turnip in the Night
Worms Have Eaten Them & Quite Unlike A Singing Bird
Laid on with a Trowel & Everything but Vertigo

Eva and Adamson (three of four episodes)
Not Another Oven Glove & Loping through the Slush
All Circumstances are Grey in the Dark & Words without Songs
Lampooned with Love & Nothing To Do with a Hereford Bull
missing episode:
Battle of Bursitis & Achieving the UnintelligibleThe recordings I have are a mixture from the first broadcasts and repeats. Somehow, I managed to miss the fourth episode both times.

Quintessentially Flummoxed (four episodes)
Days of Reflection & Relatively Absolute
Suffering is Permanent & Vibrating in the Memory
Only Stars Above You & After Me In Vain
Such Love as Spirits Feel & After the Flood

Text file with dates of broadcasts

UPDATE. Please see post of 3 August 2009 for additional episodes.
UPDATE. Dead links removed. Please see post of 16 June 2015 for links to the complete collection of recordings